News Clips - Retired Military Leaders Speak Out Against Torture in South Carolina and Florida

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GUEST: Vice Admiral Lee Admiral Gunn

DATE: January 15, 2008

SHOW: Morning Buzz with Richard Todd

HOST: Richard Todd

HOST: It’s 8:10 and we welcome you to Charleston’s morning meeting place. I’m Richard Todd, and well, here we go folks. The Michigan primary is underway, the republican primary in South Carolina is a few days away and right now criss-crossing the state of South Carolina – a group of retired generals and admirals traveling across this palmetto state to meet with presidential hopefuls to discuss policies of prisoner treatment and torture. He was command of the USS Barbie and command of the US squadron of destroyers 31 - the Navy’s tactical and technical anti-submarine warfare squadron and command of amphibious group three supporting the first marine expeditionary force in southwest Asia and east Africa. He also served as the Inspector General for the department of the Navy since 1997, until his retirement in August of 2000. We are honored to speak this morning with the Retired Vice Admiral for the United States Navy – Lee Gunn. Lee, good morning! How you doing?

LLG: Good morning Richard. I’m doing great. I appreciate very much the opportunity to talk with you today.

HOST: It’s an honor to speak with you because I know a group of you are traveling across the state to talk about the fact that you believe that right now the United States’ reputation in the world has been stained and we have undermined our intelligence gathering operation to put our own military personnel at increased risk because of our behavior when it come to governing treatment of counter terrorism operations. Tell us what has raised your concern and prompted this tour of South Carolina to speak with the presidential hopefuls.

LG: Well, that is really an accurate assessment of our view of our view of where we are as a nation in terms of national security. We view the treatment of prisoners who are under our control being interrogated by our people as an important element of national security. If not merely the fact that we are seeking obviously to gain information that will be useful and will help us understand what we are up against. But it will also is a matter of importance the way we do it, the way we compose ourselves, the way we behave. We feel that working in consonance with American principles and values is extraordinarily important. Over the decades that has put us in a position worldwide of leadership on many important issues. And, today we have in fact lost much of that cache that came with setting the standards of the world in our behavior and our treatment of people who are under our control. This is a fairly large effort, Richard. I don’t know if you have a sense of the number of people involved. The five former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have spoken out on this issue, and in our particular case, the small group that is here in South Carolina today and have been here since last Thursday represent a small component of a group that is 40 or more general officers who are concerned and feel the need to speak out on this issue.

HOST: You are co-chaired by two retired four-star generals and people of stature like yourself, admirals of the United States Navy. And, let me ask you Lee, to explain. There have been a lot of semantics in this debate over torture using terminology of extreme interrogation but not torture. What is torture in your eyes?

LG: Well, we are a signatory to international conventions on torture that are pretty specific on techniques that can be used to interrogate people and the things by omission that are not appropriate to be used. US law also lays out the requirements for US personnel to abide by the international treaties and regulations. We were very concerned in the fall of ’05 - probably that is the point that we coalesced as a group. The revelations from Abu Ghraib and the resulting work Congress was doing to try and put things back on an even keel brought us together. We have been working to help Congress to understand the national security dimension from our point of view of this important issue. We have worked for passage of the McCain amendment. We have traveled the states that are important to the presidential race and this year we started out in April in Manchester New Hampshire, we went to Des Moines Iowa in December, and it is our pleasure to be in South Carolina, which feels a little bit like coming home for me. It is a great place to be and we have had wonderful audiences to talk to, and we appreciate the time that people are willing to devote to think about this key issue.

HOST: I guess, in essence, we have had some callers that have given the buzz this morning who just sort of want to know if you believe that water boarding is torture.

LG: I personally believe that water boarding is torture. And, let me tell you, one of the things the military does very well and takes very seriously is the idea that young men and women who join the service and put on the cloth of the nation should be guided clearly, should be supported in their actions, and should not be put in a position where they have to compromise their personal standards and their own values. And asking young Americans to do things that do violence to their own values and standards is not something I think you want military leaders to do. What is more is that military people are on the front line around the world doing the nations business and when an element of the United States government, the CIA for example, allows some questions to exist about whether they do or don’t comply with the Army Field Manual, with the international conventions of torture, with the Geneva convention. Then it does what you talked about in your introduction. It drives up the sources of intelligence, it makes our allies and friends doubt the value of working side by side with us. It really diminishes our ability to secure America.

HOST: We are talking with retired US navy vice admiral Lee Gunn who is going across the state to talk to presidential candidates about torture. And you can hear admiral Gunn, on the republican side only senator John McCain and Ron Paul have vowed that torture is never right and never a good thing to do. While the other candidates seem to want to keep that option on the table and several debates and we had a listener who called in this morning and asked this question as well. A hypothetical came up about having somebody in custody knowing that a weapon of mass destruction was about to be detonated at a major American city, let’s say in Charleston, and having somebody in custody. Would torture then be justified in extrapolating information that would then save millions of American lives?

LG: You know, that is a question that sort of cuts to the heart of the issue in spite of the fact that the ticking time bomb scenario to our knowledge has never occurred. Talking about it does highlight some of the important aspects of this issue. I’d like to propose that there are some underlying principles that allow this question to be asked and cause people concern. One of them is that torture works. You have a person under your control. You know for sure. There is some real concern about how you would ever know for sure that this person has the essential information to bail you out. But, the underlying supposition about question of torture is that if you torture someone it will work. Evidence is to the contrary. You generally don’t derive information from the use of torture that is valid and verifiable. The second is that what you are asking young Americans to do. Whether it is in the CIA or the Defense Department is not going to have a terribly negative effect on them. And the third is that when you understand what the ticking time bomb scenario is, and the Commander in Chief presumably – this authority would be retained to the Oval Office in the eyes of the candidates – the Commander in Chief makes the choice to allow torture. The idea is that authority can be restricted to the Oval Office. In fact, the standards that the Commander in Chief sets for the American military resonate throughout the military. And, I got to tell you, Richard, the sergeant on the streets of Baghdad or in Fallujah faces the equivalent of a ticking time bomb every day. As that noncommissioned officer is to be responsible for a squad of men and women he needs to get down the street and there are IEDs there are snipers and the potential exists every day for that person to be confronted by a ticking time bomb. And if we say it is ok in the Oval Office to make that choice we are going to put the sergeant in the position of having to make that choice for his people and this is not the American way. It is not about them, it is about us.

HOST: I’ll tell you, this is a fascinating conversation. You call this a defining issue, and in some parts of America I think that we are still trying to define the issue specifically. Retired US Navy Vice Admiral Lee Gunn. An honor to talk to you. Thank you for your service for our country. I wish we had more time for the conversation, but I know that this is a conversation that will continue throughout this year. We thank you for joining us this morning. We really appreciate it.

LG: Thank you very much Richard. I appreciate it